Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [63]
We would walk all through this day, and wouldn’t finish until after midnight the next day – that was if we completed Endurance at all.
I just kept plodding and plodding, and then plodded some more.
Keep the pace; control your breathing; keep pushing.
The hours blurred into themselves. It was a war of attrition with my mind and body – all the time trying to ignore the growing swelling of bruised feet inside wet, cracked boots.
I descended yet another steep, snow-covered mountain down towards a reservoir: our halfway mark. Exhausted, I dropped my pack down and rummaged for some food. I needed energy.
The other recruits I could see were all eating madly as they shuffled out of the RV. Dark, wet, hunched figures, moving fast across the moorland leading back up into the mountains, chewing on oatmeal ration biscuits or army chocolate bars.
I had been stationary for over five minutes now at the checkpoint, waiting in turn. I knew I had to start moving soon or my legs would start to seize up. Stops any longer than a few minutes were always more painful to get going from again.
I saddled up and started back up the same face I had just descended. I was soon slowed by more of the incessant moon-grass and marshy bog. I tried to push through it as fast my body would take me.
Ten miles later, I caught up with Trucker and we moved on together – two lone figures trying to keep the pace, fighting this creeping exhaustion.
At the next checkpoint, I took my boots off, which were filled to the brim with mud and water from the marshy terrain. I put fresh socks on and drained my boots. In wet boots, fresh socks didn’t really make much difference, but they did mentally. We now only had eighteen miles to go – and I had new socks.
Psychologically, it was a fresh start.
Get on, Bear, get up, and get moving. Finish this.
CHAPTER 57
VW Valley is one of the final mountains one climbs on Selection – but it’s among the worst.
VW stands for Voluntary Withdrawal, and when you see the mountain you can understand why people have often quitted here.
Steep, windswept, and boggy – and at mile thirty it is the point where many recruits quit and remove themselves from the course – broken by the sheer distance, weight and speed.
But not me. Not now.
On my backside, I slid down the first steep re-entrant leading into the bowl of the valley. I was using the butt of my weapon to steer me as I glissaded down the snow, and I finally slowed at the bottom, near an iced-over stream.
I crossed it and started straight up the face with Trucker behind me.
On and on and on – until finally at the crest I collapsed and waited for him.
Trux’s feet were both badly swollen. Later on, he discovered that he’d broken both of his big toes somewhere around this point. It was purely from the incessant pounding his feet were taking. He was in agony.
I heard him muttering under his breath. He was mumbling Bible verses to himself.
We had often both quietly prayed together before the big marches. Now we needed that help more than ever.
‘I am holding you by your right hand … Do not be afraid. I am here to help you.’ Isaiah, 41:13.
If ever I needed to hear such words it was now.
It is easy to be cynical, and to think you do not need help when all is going your way; but if Selection taught me anything it is that we all have our limits. To push beyond those limits sometimes requires something beyond just ourselves.
That is what my faith has given me – a secret strength and help when I have needed it most.
I needed it now.
As we cleared the summit, the mist descended and darkness began to fall again. We soon began to get very cold. We were exhausted, staggering through this boggy plateau in the failing light, and gradually we realized we had become disoriented – out of sheer fatigue.
We were descending slowly when we should have been still on the plateau.
‘Where the hell are we?’ I mumbled to myself, shivering, as I restudied the map.
We both searched in circles for the small cliff-edge path that would take us down to our next checkpoint.
It was